


Sea Salt Ice Cream and Flower Crowns

by PoH



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Kingdom Hearts II, Pre-Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, Pre-Kingdom Hearts I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-09-22 12:30:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17059811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoH/pseuds/PoH
Summary: Before Radiant Garden fell to darkness and became known as Hollow Bastion, a group of kids called it home.These are some short stories and drabbles about Lea, Isa, and the members of the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee, including their time together as kids, the fall of Radiant Garden, and slowly putting everything back together again.





	1. Project: Friendship, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> I chose to give this fanfic a "G" rating and not use archive warnings, but that will almost definitely change as the story progresses. I'm planning to write short stories and drabbles about this group that'll span most of the Kingdom Hearts timeline, so there will be chapters about Radiant Garden falling, Lea and Isa losing their hearts, etc. But since I don't have all the details planned out yet, I've decided to add warnings as they come.
> 
> Also, for those not familiar with the FF games outside of Kingdom Hearts, Terra Branford is one of the main protagonists of Final Fantasy VI. She is NOT Terra from Birth by Sleep.
> 
> And I realize this all going to get completely invalidated by Kingdom Hearts 3 in a month. I'm okay with that.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy this fic, and if you do, any form of kudos and/or comments are always appreciated!

It took about three minutes for Aerith to get scolded by her new kindergarten teacher, and it wouldn’t be the last time it happened.

“Boys and girls, let’s settle down,” Miss Everhart said to her excited class. Some of the children were chatting with friends; a few of them cried for their parents, and some doodled on their desks. Aerith had other ideas. “Aerith Gainsborough and Terra Branford, please put that away right now!”

Her best friend, Terra, dropped the magic ball of light that they’d been tossing back and forth to one another. Aerith pouted as she watched it hit the floor and dissolve. Her mom had told her that kindergarten would be _fun_ , and that she’d get to learn how to use magic spells in school. She wondered if someone forgot to tell her teacher those things.

Miss Everhart started the day by having the class introduce themselves to one another and announce their favorite color. While everyone else had a turn to speak, Aerith played with the ends of the ribbon that her mother put in her hair. She noticed a few other children from the playground. But the only person she really knew was Terra, and she already knew that Terra’s favorite color was green. She also recognized a boy with blond spiky hair that always seemed to be frowning about something whenever she saw him. Aerith had heard his mother call him by name before, but couldn’t remember it now. When the teacher approached him, he mumbled something so incomprehensible that she needed to ask him to repeat it, causing everyone else to giggle.

“I’m _Cloud_ ,” he spoke up louder.

“And what’s your favorite color?” 

“I don’t have one.”

“Everyone has a favorite color,” said their teacher in an encouraging tone.

“ _I_ don’t!”

“He doesn’t have one ‘cause he’s stupid,” said one of the other boys from the playground, causing most of the class to laugh.

“That’s not true,” answered Miss Everhart, giving them all a stern look. “You know, we’re going to learn a lot of new things this year, but the most important thing we will learn is how to treat everyone like a friend.” She spoke so firmly that the children quieted down and listened to her intently. “When you see someone who looks sad or lonely, always be sure to ask them if they would like to play with you. We all like to have fun with our friends, but some boys and girls don’t know whom to play with. So be as welcoming as possible to everyone you meet. When we have Play Time, I want you to try and find somebody who doesn’t have a friend and be his or her buddy for the rest of the day.” 

And so, as her teacher finished that speech, Aerith looked at Cloud Strife, blushing and glaring at his desk, and decided to make him her personal project for the rest of the day. They were going to be best friends whether he liked it or not.

After naptime, when the class got released into the school gardens for the afternoon, Aerith found Terra and they looked for Cloud. They checked behind every cluster of bushes and up every tree. They searched the swings, the slide, the see-saw, and all around the jungle gym. He appeared to have vanished into thin air. “Maybe we should play with someone else?” suggested Terra, “You know the boy with the blue hair at your table? He didn’t look like he had any friends.” 

“You mean Isa?” asked Aerith.

“Yeah, that’s his name! He’s over by the sandbox right now.” She pointed to a little boy sitting alone, making a sandcastle with a tower taller than his own head. But then another boy in their class ran up to the sandbox, waving a pair of Frisbees around, and started talking to him.

“Never mind, he’s got a friend,” said Aerith, turning away from the pair, “Let’s go back to looking for Cloud!”

“But where did he go?” asked Terra. No matter what direction they turned, he could not be seen.

“He’s gotta be hiding somewhere,” decided Aerith. “We’ll find him!”

“But what if he doesn’t want to be friends with anybody, and that’s why he’s hiding?” Terra pointed out with a frown.

“You heard our teacher- everybody wants a friend!” countered Aerith, “So we’re gonna be _his_ friends! Let’s check by that shed!”

And sure enough, they found Cloud hiding behind the gardener’s shed with his arms wrapped tightly around his knees. He glared at them when they approached and got up to run away.

“No, come back!” cried Aerith, grabbing his wrist, “I’m Aerith and this is Terra and we’re gonna be your friends!”

“I don’t want you to be my friends!” cried Cloud, yanking his arm away from her, “Go away!”

“But don’t you want friends?” protested Aerith, “We’re really nice!”

Cloud folded his arms over his chest. “You’re just bein’ nice ‘cause that’s what the teacher told you to do. You don’t like me and I’m not your friend.”

“I told you!” Terra whispered loudly. Aerith smacked her away.

“C’mon, can’t you play with us for just a teensy-tiny-little bit?” she pleaded, “We’ll be really nice to you, honest! We can play whatever you want us to play!”

“No! I said, GO AWAY!” shouted Cloud.

Terra tugged at Aerith’s arm, but she stayed put and pondered through all the arguments that she’d ever had with her mother when she didn’t want to do something. “How d’you know you won’t like being friends with us if you don’t try it?” she finally asked.

Cloud blushed and screwed up his face- even so, she could see tears forming before he lowered his head and kicked at the dirt. “’Cause nobody likes being my friend,” he answered, “They play for one day and then they don’t come back to the playground or they find somebody new to play with. And then they laugh at me when I try to play too. ‘Cause I’m weird and I’m stupid.”

“Oh.” Aerith played with the edges of her pink shirt as she worked through that response, and Terra stopped pulling on her arm. The two girls played together almost every day and never saw any reason to stop or dump each other for someone else. Aerith decided to explain the situation to Cloud. “We don’t do that,” she insisted, “We’ll play with you whenever you want. I promise!”

“No, you won’t!” he cried, “You’re just doin’ what the teacher said to do! Leave me alone!” With that said, he turned and ran away from them. They could hear him bawling even as reached the other side of the schoolyard.

“Uh-oh,” mumbled Terra, “Are we gonna get in trouble for making him cry? We didn’t mean to make him cry, right?”

Aerith shook her head. Clearly, Project: Friendship with Cloud would take longer than she’d anticipated.


	2. The First Stray Puppy

Lea couldn’t wait for the first day of school. His older siblings insisted that it was terrible, but all he ever saw were kids running around together in the spacious gardens outside. And they got to do it _every day_. How could that not be fun? Better still, going to school meant an opportunity to make lots of new friends. 

But when he got to school, his big sister didn’t take him to the gardens. They went to a large classroom instead. At least there were plenty of other kids inside, and most of them played with toys or chatted to one another, so his expectations hadn’t been shattered yet. Many of his classmates seemed to know each other already, or at least they knew one other person. He held his favorite Frisbees up and looked around for someone who might find them impressive. His eyes landed on a boy who hadn’t joined the others in the play area, but sat sniffling at one of the tables. 

“Hi!” he greeted the other boy, “I’m Lea! How come you’re not playing?”

The other boy wiped some tears away and stared at him. “Huh?”

“ _Lea_ ,” he repeated, raising his voice so it could be heard over the sounds of the other children playing. “L-E-A. That’s my name. You got it memorized?”

The other boy shook his head. “I guess. What d’you want?”

“I wanna know if you wanna play with me? I brought my Frisbees!” Lea lifted them up. They were the coolest toys he owned by far, black with shooting stars running across them.

But the other boy sniffled again and looked back at his desk. “No,” he replied, “I don’t like it here. I wanna go home.”

“Oh.” Lea scratched his head with one of his Frisbees. “Do you wanna play with me before you go home? It’ll be fun!” The other boy shook his head. “C’mon, why not? What’s your name? You ever play with Frisbees before?”

“Isa,” replied the other boy quietly.

“What’s ‘isa’ mean?”

“That’s my _name_ ,” said Isa, “And I’m not having fun here, so _there_.” He crossed his arms and glared at his desk.

His behavior made no sense to Lea. Everyone had to go to school- at least, he’d heard that many times within his own family. So why not try to enjoy it? He certainly didn’t want to sit in his desk and cry all day, if nothing else. He waved one of his Frisbees in Isa’s face. “C’mon,” he pleaded, “I’ll throw and you try to catch it! You’ll like it. I do!”

“No, boys,” their teacher, Miss Everhart, suddenly interrupted. “We can’t play with Frisbees indoors. You might knock something over and break it. But don’t worry,” she added, when Lea started to whine, “You can play with them outside. We’ll have time in the gardens before you go home.”

“YAY!” Lea cheered. Isa slumped forward on his desk. Undeterred, Lea sat down next to him as the rest of the children got to their assigned seats. He kept himself entertained by spinning his Frisbees around on his fingertips until Miss Everhart started calling on them to introduce themselves.

* * *

“…so be as welcoming as possible to everyone you meet. When we have Play Time, I want you to try and find somebody who doesn’t have a friend and be his or her buddy for the rest of the day.”

And so, as his teacher finished the speech, Lea looked at Isa, who’d remained slumped forward over his desk, and decided to make him his personal project for the rest of the day. They were going to be best friends whether he liked it or not.

After nap time, Lea joined the rest of the class into the gardens. He lost track of Isa in the shuffle to get outside, but eventually found him sitting in the sandbox alone. Lea grinned and ran up to him, waving his Frisbees in the air. In the brief amount of time that they’d had so far in the gardens, Isa had built a sand tower that went past his head. “ _Wow!_ ” exclaimed Lea, “That looks really cool! Did you make that all by yourself?”

Isa gestured to the empty sandbox. “Um, yeah.”

“You wanna play Frisbees now? I’ll show you how to do it!” Lea offered.

“No, I want to finish my castle.”

Lea lowered his Frisbees. “Can I help make it?”

Isa gave him a once-over and pondered the question for a moment. “Um…” he deliberated, frowning. Lea waited with baited breath. “Yeah…okay. You can make the wall around it. Just be careful that you don’t knock it over.”

“Yes!” Lea cheered, pumping his fist. He threw his Frisbees off to the side and sat down to play with Isa. “How big d’you want to make it? As big as the whole sandbox?” 

After surveying the box, Isa smiled just a little bit. “Yeah, okay!” he agreed, “And we can put sticks on the wall so it looks like there are spikes coming out!” 

“Awesome!” cried Lea, “And there’s gotta be a moat too, where we put all the dragons!”

“What are we gonna use for dragons?”

“I’ve got toys at home; I can bring ‘em tomorrow!”

“Okay, but what do we use right now?” insisted Isa.

Lea glanced around and then pulled a sharp stone out of the ground next to the sandbox. “We can use pointy rocks like this one?” he suggested.

Isa nodded enthusiastically. “And let’s use one of your Frisbees as a flag!”

“No, the Frisbees are the giant shields that defend the wall!”

They got so wrapped up in the planning of their grand fortress that they barely had time to start building it before their teacher lined them up to go home. And as soon as they spotted their parents waiting for them, both boys rushed over and begged to be allowed to keep playing at Lea’s house. For the rest of the afternoon, they drew extensive blueprints of the sandcastle with colored chalk. “Don’t forget to bring your dragons tomorrow,” Isa reminded Lea, as the sun went down.

“I won’t! Don’t forget to bring the flag and the jewels!” replied Lea.

“I won’t! This is gonna be the coolest castle anyone’s ever built! It’s gonna be better than the one that Ansem the Wise has!” declared Isa.

“It’s gonna be SO cool!” agreed Lea, “We’ll be the kings of the whole playground, you ‘n me!” As he waved goodbye to his new friend, he wondered once again why his siblings all complained about school so much. School was _awesome_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The goal is to update this story once every other week, and hopefully get back to updating "Just the Four of Us" on alternate weeks. I doubt that's going to happen, but that's the plan.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments of any kind are always appreciated!


	3. Enter the Detestable Child

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, I finished Kingdom Hearts 3. I'd been worried that whatever happened would make the events in my story no longer possible in canon. And while what WAS revealed didn't really follow my ideas, it didn't matter too much in the end. As you've probably noticed from the tags, this story focuses heavily on Final Fantasy characters, including those who have already appeared in Kingdom Hearts already and those who haven't.
> 
> And, well, without going too heavily into spoilers, let's just say nothing new was revealed about the Final Fantasy characters' backstories, so nothing really has to change there. It's not VERY likely that Lea or Isa ever knew them or cared about them, but it's not denied either. So, that's all right.
> 
> While I might make some adjustments in later chapters, by and large, I don't want to change what I had planned. It's fan fiction and I obviously don't own any of these characters. At the very least, you can consider it a "what if" story.
> 
> On with the chapter...

If the children believed they’d seen everybody they were going to meet in their kindergarten class on the first day of school, they turned out to be incorrect.  The next morning, a new girl arrived.  She would have attracted her classmates’ attention even if she hadn’t been new.  Both of her parents accompanied her, because they had to drag her into the classroom, kicking and screaming the whole way. 

“I’M NOT GOING!” she shouted, “I DON’T WANNA GO! School stinks and so do you!”

“Be quiet, Prishe!” snapped her mother, “You are going to behave yourself today and that’s that!”  To Miss Everhart, she added, “If our daughter starts telling you that she’s going to throw up, ignore her.  She’s been pretending to be sick so she didn’t have to come to school.  But she is _staying_.”

“NO, I’M NOT!” hollered the little girl.

“Yes, you _are!_ ” said her father.  Prishe responded by biting his arm.

“Ooooo!” the class gasped.

“We’ll…we’ll manage,” Miss Everhart assured her parents. Her mouth twitched a few times, but she couldn’t quite manage to get it smiling.  “Don’t you worry.  She’ll love school before the day’s over.”

“I bet I won’t, you stupid lady!” said Prishe.

“Oooo!” the class gasped again.

“Prishe, that’s _enough_ ,” said her father, rubbing his sore arm, “You do _not_ talk to your teacher like that.  Do you understand?”  She stuck her tongue out at him.  “We’ll pick you up this afternoon, and I want to hear that you were good and…” His voice got drowned out when Prishe shrieked, threw herself on the floor and beat it with her fists.

The kids watched her in stunned silence.  Miss Everhart made another failed attempt to smile and said in a strained voice, “Why don’t we have Prishe sit in the Quiet Corner for a little bit, until she’s had a chance to calm down?”

“It won’t be quiet when I’m through with it!” Prishe declared.  Miss Everhart took her by the hand and tried to lead her toward a little chair in the far left corner of the room.  The girl went limp and screamed the whole way.  “Why don’t you love me anymore?!” she sobbed, as her parents backed away towards the door, “Why are you leavin’ me here?”

“Prishe, we’ve been over this.  We’re _not_ leaving you at school forever,” her mother sighed. 

“Yes, you are!” she wailed.  When Miss Everhart plopped her down in the Quiet Corner, she got up and ran back to the classroom door.  Unfortunately for Prishe, her parents had already shut it behind them and she couldn’t quite reach the handle.  She beat at the door and cried as the rest of the class continued to watch.

“Boy, she is  _weird_ ,” whispered Isa to Lea.  His friend nodded in agreement.

“Prishe,” the teacher called out over her howls, “When you’re ready to join us, I’ll show you your seat.  Today, we’re going to learn about shapes…”

Prishe continued to sit by the door and cry while the class went through their morning lessons.  Eventually, her sobs turned into coughs, and soon after that, she quieted down.  Nonetheless, she stayed by the door and refused to join the others until Miss Everhart called them all to sit on the mat for Story Time.  Even then, she hung back at the very edge of the group, teetering back and forth between staying near the door and listening to the fairy tale. 

All the while, the rest of the class peeked at her as they went through each activity.  Nobody tried talking to her in order to avoid the risk of getting bitten.  In any case, Lea and Isa wanted to focus on their plans for the sandcastle.  During Art, they took out paper and crayons to recreate and make revisions on the previous day’s blueprints.  “Okay, now you draw our flag,” instructed Isa, “And I’m gonna draw a skull.  That’s gonna be our KEEP OUT sign.”

Lea slashed at his paper.  A dragon with triangle spikes all over its back began to take shape. “You know what else would be really cool?” he said, “A trap door!”

“We can’t make a trap door out of sand,” said Isa.

“No, we PRETEND there’s a trap door!  Duh!”

All day long, they talked about the castle: during lessons, at lunch time, whispering to each other during Story Time and Nap Time…and then, _finally_ , Miss Everhart told the class to line up for recess.  The boys jumped up and down in line, clutching their plans and their toys. They’d planned the whole thing out. They knew exactly how the castle would look, and how big they wanted to build it, and how much “treasure” they would keep inside.

They just hadn’t planned on anyone else reaching the sandbox before them.

Another kindergarten class came out just as they entered the garden. Five boys and a girl ran past them. And by the time Lea and Isa caught up to them at the sandbox, they’d knocked over Isa’s tower from the day before. “HEY!” cried Isa, “This is our sandbox!” 

The girl shot back, “Nuh-uh!  We got here first, so it’s OUR sandbox now!  Go away!”

“But we have to build our castle!” protested Lea, holding up their blueprints.

“Yeah?  Well, we’re building a whole city!” said the boy who’d knocked over Isa’s tower, “Go build somewhere else.” 

“No!” shouted Isa, “This is our spot, not yours!”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is!”

“NO, IT’S NOT!” all five children shouted at once. They all stood up, shovels and buckets in hand, and took threatening steps towards Lea and Isa.  The boys backed away but still hovered near the sandbox.

“Can we use it when you’re done?” Lea tried.

“No, it’s gonna take us all afternoon,” explained one of the other boys.

“That’s not fair!  We used it yesterday, so we were really here first!” wailed Lea.

“Yesterday doesn’t count, dummy,” snorted the girl.

“But…but…but we worked really hard on it!” stammered Isa.

“We don’t care,” answered the boy who’d knocked his tower over.

“What are you gonna do?  Cry about it?” sneered one of the other boys.  Isa screwed up his face and clenched his hands into fists. The other kids laughed.  “Look, he is crying!”

“I am not!” shouted Isa.

“Yeah, you are!  You’re crying like a girl!”

Lea stepped in between them.  “You leave my friend alone!” he yelled.

“Make us!”  One of the boys shoved him backwards and he fell into Isa.  The two friends struggled to get back up again while the other kids laughed at them.  Lea could see that Isa did have a few tears running down his face, and stood in front of him so that nobody else would notice when his friend wiped them away.

By the time they got themselves back on their feet and facing the other kids, the new girl had arrived on the scene. 

Prishe had been watching the entire scene from afar. Now, she walked right up to one of the boys and shoved him into the sand.  The other children surrounded her.  She lashed out at them, punching with her fists, kicking, and biting before any of them could think of a way to fight back.  Within seconds, all five of the kids ran off screaming. “You guys cry like boys!” she shouted after them.

Lea and Isa just stared at her as she turned around to face them.  “You can have the sandbox back now,” she told them.

“Um…thanks?” replied Lea.

“You’re welcome.  Can I help build the castle?”

The boys traded glances.  Isa started to shake his head, but Lea held up his hand.  “We gotta talk about it,” he told Prishe.  The two of them got into a huddle and whispered back and forth rapidly.

“No!  It’s OUR sandbox!”

“But she just saved our lives!”

“We coulda taken’ ‘em!”

“No, we couldn’t!”

“Yeah, we could!”

“If we don’t say yes, she might bite us or shove us in the sandbox too!”

“…oh yeah.”  Isa and Lea broke from their huddle.  “All right,” Isa sighed, “You can play with us too.”

“Cool.”  Prishe sat herself down in the sand and picked up one of the shovels that the other kids had dropped.  “What am I building?  My name’s Prishe, by the way.” 

“Yeah, we know.  You can build the wall that goes all around the sandbox.  Lea ‘n’ I are gonna work on the castle in the middle.”

“And here are my dragons,” added Lea, shoving his toys into her hand, “When you’re done with the wall, you can start digging the moat that goes inside the wall and put them in there.  Here’s our drawings so you know what it looks like.”

Prishe smiled at them and immediately got to work. The boys stayed on the opposite side of the box and kept their eyes on her while they filled their buckets with sand. Maybe they didn’t need dragons with her around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who have completed Kingdom Hearts 3 and may be wondering...no, Prishe is not "the girl." She's from Final Fantasy XI and I fell in love with her spunky, brash character while playing Dissidia 012. 
> 
> However, I've never actually played FFXI, so I based everything off of her appearance in the Dissidia games and the information about her in the FF wiki. I'm sorry if I've gotten anything wrong about her characterization, and please feel free to correct me in the comments.


End file.
